Our Hearts Will Go On...

Dear Friends,

Today I've been pondering a verse I read during my morning devotions. It’s Psalm 37:4, which says: "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart's desires.” It’s an interesting verse - and one I think that we can easily misinterpret. For example, we all have thoughts and ideas and dreams of doing certain things with our lives. At the same time, if we belong to God, we're faced with the question of whether or not our desires coincide with God's desires for us. So, when we read a verse like Psalm 37:4, it’s easy to think “God's going to give me my heart's desire!” Then with that thought in mind, we move forward pursuing our own desires, assuming that’s what God must want for us as well. But in reality, we're just doing whatever we want to do - and that’s a dangerous way to live.

That's why, if we're sincere about seeking and doing God's will for our lives, we need to ask ourselves: “Can the desires of my heart show me God's will for my life?” The good news is, God has given us a very clear answer to that question - and His answer is “yes.” So yes, the desires of our hearts can show us God's will for our lives. But before you get all excited and think this means you can go in to work and yell at your boss because that’s what you "desire" to do, let me clarify one very important thing: the only time we can trust our hearts to show us God's will is when our hearts are fully centered on Him.

If we reread Psalm 37:4 we’ll see that, before it mentions God giving us the desires of our hearts, it begins with “Take delight in the Lord.” In other words, before we can trust our hearts to show us what God wants, our hearts need to be “delighting” in God.

That means our next question is: What does it mean to “delight in God?” There are probably a lot of different ways to answer that, but they would all begin with spending time with Him in prayer and in His Word. When we spend consistent time in God’s presence and in scripture, it puts us in a place where He can shape our character, and our hearts are molded to reflect Him. In that way, we begin to want to do His will. So the focus of our prayers and Bible study shouldn't be to just make sure we're checking things off our Christian “To Do” list. Instead, we do those things in order to build a deeper relationship with God. We should want to truly get to know God, not just know about Him. And the more we know Him, both through information and experience, the more we'll love Him and want to please Him. In that way, living for God will become our “delight.” And when that happens, the “desires of our hearts” can and will show us God's will for our lives.

So today, let's ask God to help us delight in Him. Let's ask Him to give us the desire to spend time with Him, and also to let Him transform our hearts so that they will truly direct us towards His will for our lives.

Amen?

Daniel